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| I have decided not to whine any more about the weather. I have just realized that most of the northern hemisphere is suffering from cold and ice and snow. I am riding the school van to and from school so I don't have to walk on the icy and snow-slick roads and sidewalks thanks to my bosses and bus drives and bus monitors at Spring School. They all look after me and help me over the icy parts. Yes, i feel old and feeble, but, it's very kind of them to care.
The Grandmothers came for dinner this evening. For a week my family and I have been in a discussion: what to fix--chicken and dumplings or chili. The cold, snow, and ice spell that has hit Korea had just about narrowed it down to chili: to get a chicken I would have to got to Hyundai Department Store grocery, about ten blocks away, and lug it home, as well as other ingredients. I could get ground meat at the organic food store, with organic prices, on the corner. J.J. had sent me some taco and some fajita seasoning, so I figured by combining the two I would come pretty close to chili.
Friday I got a hair cut and on the way home stopped at the new GS grocery--the one that was being completely renovated the last time I wanted to buy a chicken. This time, the meat counter was intact, and it had chicken and chopped beef. I bought both. This way, per family request, I had a choice. So when I got home, I made both: chicken and dumplings and chili.
I am forever in the debt of the ladies in the English class I worked with in Hungary: they taught me to make dumplings. Gathering unfamiliar ingredients to make a familiar dish is appos pos here: much guess work. But it worked out fine.
My house and therefore the stairwell of my apartment building reeked of chili and boiling chicken. The steam raised the temperature in my apartment to where the heat was coming from above as well as below the heated floors.
Four of the “Grandmothers”--they’re not all grandmothers, but some of them are and some are my children’s age--came bearing gifts: fresh strawberries, fresh tomatoes, an elegant, hand made tea set, and a six pack of Maegoli--a carbonated rice wine that I have come to love more than beer. I had cleaned, mopped, hidden, and put away most of what gets in the way in my apartment--an excellent exercise for me since I will soon be leaving and need to get all this in perspective.
We talked, we laughed, we looked at the pictureS J.J. had put on the digital picture frame for me--I think they have made me more of a real person for the Grandmothers, a person with a family and a past. Thanks, J.
We ate hor d’ouvres: olives, chips and Pace piquante sauce, candied pecans from Linda’s mom--a real hit--, and roased peanutes in the shell. Again, we talked, we laughed, we ate.
For dinner we moved into the kitchen--me in a chair and they on the floor (I would do the floor, but my getting up is not a pretty picture). Most chose the chicken and dumplings. I was surprised. I thought Koreans liked spicy food. Mrs. Han is just back from Austin, which she loved. Sunny was interested in the books I had asked her to go through to find ones she wanted. Mrs. Kim talked about the Lunar New Year. Mrs. Ann and I talked about the music I had going on iTunes on my computer.
Then, I passed out paper and asked them to write down and draw a picture of what they would like me to tell Americans about Korea. Their answers and drawings give such an interesting perspective on Korean culture, history, and life. Thank you, Ladies. You have given me much food for thought as to what to share about this country and its people.
Jasmine tea and Korean coffee along with the Tiramisu Mrs. Kim had brought and the apple coffeee cake I had bought, brought the evening to a close.
It was so good to see them comfortable in my home, enjoying my culinary labors, and laughing, talking, translating among themselves. These ladies have brought me so much of an insight into Korea, its culture, and its people. They have helped to create so many memories. All I can say is thank you----and why didn’t you try the chile?? | | |
| I know, I know, I just wrote about how cold it is here. But---it really is cold!
Monday, it snowed all day long. Korea saw the most snow it has seen since 1939. There was no place for the snow to go. Shop keepers tried to shovel it off the side walk and into the street, but then there was the problem of where would the cars go. The piles on the side of the street were huge. I didn't even venture out of the house on Monday. I know. Chicken, opportunity for history in the making, etc. But it was cold! and it was slippery! and I liked being warm and cozy inside. So no historian here.
Tuesday morning I started at 6:30 a.m. once again trying to get a taxi to work. No taxi. I called Hace and she and a van driver, Mr. Kim, who bring the children to school, came to may apartment and picked me up. Suited me just fine! It's cold and icy and snowy and slick out there. One slip and "bam!" I could be down with a broken whatever! Did I mention that I am OLD! and FRAGILE!
The kids all seemed to be excited to be back at school and with so many stories to tell: sled rides, snowball fights with Dad, vacation trips to islands, vacation trips to Hong Kong, making snowmen with brother or father. They had lots of good stories for show and tell.
Getting home that evening was another adventure. No, the day didn't warm up. The snow and the ice were still prevalent. I wandered out to the major street near the school thinking I would hail a taxi. HAH! All the taxis that came my way were full. I tried for almost twenty minutes and gave up and started walking home. The walk that usually takes me twenty minutes took me over an hour. Now, picture this: I have on a camel colored wool coat that is about three sizes too big--it's huge. I'm bundled up in scarves and caps and gloves so that only two, brown eyes are exposed. And I walk, with eyes constantly downcast, like a penguin. Yep, it seems to be the safest shuffle I can find to contend with the ice and slick snow and the snow drifts. I must truly be a sight, but what the heck! I am one person in a city of eleven million. Few people know me. Few people even care. So I shuffle along, old lady Maxine style just hoping to get to my destination with all bones in tact.
Today, Wednesday, doesn't seem to be getting any better. Although the major roads are cleared of snow thanks to the military and city people working overtime with front end loaders and dump trucks removing all the snow--that isn't melting very fast since the temperature isn't going above freezing, the side streets are still filled with snow tracks and huge piles on the curbs. I saw three cars spinning out, trying to get some traction on these streets. The tracks themselves are very slick, and places I almost fell a couple of times. Of all the shoes, I am wearing my Crocodiles to get to and from work. They have the most traction and the widest foot base of anything I own. Besides, they're waterproof! However, I still walk like a penguin. Amazing how we relate to animal nomenclature in difficult circumstances. Guess they have it all figured out in the first place.
I did make it to the post office before making my way home. And as the bread shop that I like to buy from is close, I stopped in and bought a few half loaves of walnut bread, and apple tart, and a small loaf of whole grain bread that was still warm. Needless to say, that's what I had for supper. It was wonderful. Korean bread is very different from U.S. bread, and to find whole grain is truly a FIND.
All points were extremely hard going. I called off my tutoring session simply because the walk was absolutely treacherous. As I get older, I realize how my center of gravity and balance have shifted. I also realize how one fall can be doom. So the penguin walk may become my standard
method of perambulatory exigence.
Did I mention: "It's cold outside!" | | |
| The Year of the Tiger is here. I'm trying to get used to saying twenty-ten. My sister and I had this big discussion of whether it should be two thousand ten or twenty-ten. As she explained, "We wouldn't have said one thousand nine hundred ten. That whole century we said nineteen whatever." Looking at it that way, I can go with twenty-ten. I guess twenty oh nine wouldn't have worked, but now that we're into numbers ten and above, it does sound right.
It's cold here. Today, (it's Monday here even though Xanga says Sunday--international date line and all) one of the warmest days of this week according to the forecast, the temperature will be from five to twenty-four degrees, and it's snowing--hard. I started trying to get a taxi to work at 6:30 this morning, thinking if I started calling early I could get one by 8:30. About 7:30 the taxi company called and said they couldn't come. They may have said they weren't putting taxis out at all, but I'm not sure--broken English, cell phone static, etc. I called the school to say I wasn't coming in unless it warmed up and I could get a taxi. My walk is over pretty slick sidewalks and streets, so it just doesn't sound like a good idea to me. About 9 the school called and said classes are canceled.
So "This Day Is Mine." (My favorite Jerry Reed song--or one of my favorites.)
I thought I would write a little, maybe download all my pictures from Vietnam and Cambodia, read on "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" which I am loving, swill hot tea, make soup, get out my winter clothes, wash clothes, knit on the scarf I'm working on, listen to the radio on iTunes, etc.
I need to go to the American Embassy to get some more pages for my passport--I'm completely out--some countries go crazy with those stamps--but that involves a subway or taxi and a walk and I don't want to do either or any of those. That will have to wait for another day. It's just that my "other days" are getting fewer.
Yesterday I met Bonnie for brunch at Pancake Square and we went on to the National Museum of Korea to see the Inca exhibit. We took a taxi from Apgujeong since on the map on the internet it looked like it was quite a walk from the subway to the Museum and did I mention, "It's cold outside!" We had a very nice cab driver who spoke no English, but tried really hard. I had written down the phone number of the Museum, so he called for directions and got us there just fine, although there were moments we thought we were going too far and in the wrong direction, that he thought we had said Incheon--the place where McArthur landed--instead of Ichon, but he did it right.
The exhibit was really good. The only problem with museums in Korea is there is little to no English. The titles on the labels have some English and a few of the introductory posters have English, but none of the individual explanations do and none of the books in the museum store are in English. I had bought a book at YB Bookstore on Saturday called "Horrible Histories: Incredible Incas" that is written for children to make history more interesting. So we kept looking up stuff in my book and reading along with the exhibits--and giggling because the authors look for the unique and the humor in history. Lots of beautiful, intact pottery, textiles that have retained their color, gold and tourquoise jewelry, huge ear plugs that men wore fashionably in their ear lobes--the bigger the plug and the longer the lobe stretch the higher in the pecking order,-- weapons, mummies, and instruments used in sacrificial rites--at least I think that's what it all was according to the few titles and Horrible History.
I have yet to blog about my trip, maybe today. I have had to have a few days to sleep and put into some sort of perspective the overwhelming amount of sites and information I absorbed in four days and two countries. So later. | | |
| Our school Christmas program that we have been working on for about three months has finally come to fruition. The kids all did great--I think. I only got to see mine perform, but they were all so excited and looked so good in their costumes and there were no upset directors or parents, it must have gone well.
It was a long day for all of us. We held the program in a wedding hall quite some distance from the school. That meant carting all the kids and all their belongings and all their lunch and water and "just-in-case" stuff. Kim Teacher is really good at organizing my class and getting all their stuff together and then keeping up with it. I think I just walk around in a daze, overwhelmed by it all. She even carried--and used--a comb and spray bottle of water to spruce everyone up before the big production. Emily, one of the teachers of the five year old classes and the ballet teacher and the director of the production, had costumes and props all organized before we got there. She had gone the night before and set it all up--quite an undertaking! But it made our jobs that much easier.
We all assembled in this big room and got ready for the dress rehearsal. The children didn't sit in the auditorium. They went from the room, down the hall, and lined up outside, waiting for their turn to perform.
Picture this: fifty plus children ages 4-7, excited, hungry, bored, waiting from 10:30-1:30 to do their thing; teachers getting them ready for their costume changes, their parts, trying to keep the noise level down--hah--and keeping up with all the stuff. One dress rehearsal just after we got there before the big show. After that was over, my only thought was, "You mean we have to do this all over again?!"
Picture this: freezing cold rooms and halls and helping little ballerinas into their tutus and little children lining up and waiting for their turn on stage. I had one scary moment: I was helping Hennah out of her Sugar Plum Fairy dance costume and on with her dress and her hair got stuck in the zipper and she was up next and it was the real production! I couldn't even figure out how her hair got caught much less how to get it out and her hair was in a French braid, so pulling it through was not an option. Miraculously, I worked and worked with it and it came out. But I was really paniced for a few moments.
Picture this: some kids crying, some kids with stage fright, some kids with stage moxie and loving every minute of performing for parents and kin. It was quite an assortment.
The production went well. We had the older children learn lines from "T'was the Night Before Christmas" and intersperse it with Christmas songs and dances performed by all the classes. Most classes had two songs and most of them had some kind of costume and prop. My class, Wisdom and Power, did "Deck the Halls" and "Must be Santa." I have four boys and three girls. We never know what our boys are going to do--anything from absolute, stubborn refusal, from complete zoning out during singing, to getting extremely loud and verbose. We could only hope that our handmade props would make it through all the rehearsals and to the final show.
At the end of "Deck the Halls" it looked odd that our kids just stood there and sang while all the other classes had choreographed dances and motions and props, so I came up with this idea of green streamers on a long stick that we could grab, hold out, and weave into a Christmas tree--like a Maypole. Uh, the weaving just wasn't going to happen. Much too complicated. But after Kim figured out how to decorate the streamers, and the kids figured out how to hold them in a J and not pull over the whole tree, it turned out kind of neat.
For "Must Be Santa" the bosses insisted on costumes and bought them all red capes trimmed in white. With their red Santa hats and pom-pom cherry noses stuck on with masking tape, they really did look good as a group on stage. Of course, we had to explain to the boys that these were Superman capes and they looked really wicked in them. They did well. It's a good thing we were singing along to canned music; otherwise, I don't think the audience would have known there was actually a song involved to all the motions they were going through since their singing volume was just above a whisper!
It was cold, it was chaos, but Emily and all the teachers and, of course, the children pulled it off. The kids were excited to see their parents and relatives in the audience. They were proud of the job they did. They had fun--which is probably the most important part of the whole exercise.
But picture this: Me, eyes round and glassy eyed, smile weak but trying, head buzzing, and body stumbling to the van to take me back to the school for my after school class wondering, "Is it over yet?" I felt like Goldie Hawn in "Overboard" when Ken and the boys have to put her in the barrel of water and all she can say is "Blub, blub."
(I've included a few picture on the photoblog) | | |
| December 17, 2009
For the past week I feel that I am on auto pilot, just going through the motions. I can’t put my finger on the reason why: it could be the below freezing weather that I walk to and from school in; it could be the settling into a routine that has become just that--routine; it could be that my days in Seoul and at this job are quickly coming to a close; it could be the Christmas season and how different it is here compared to home; it could be that this past weekend I faced extremes in humanity--its beauty and its ugliness--and haven’t quite come to terms with all that. And it could be a combination of all that and my brain is just saying, “I think I’ll take a break and let the body just get on with it”: autopilot.
It is really cold here. This morning when I left for work looking and walking like a penguin with all the bundling I had done to keep warm, it was 16 degrees Fahrenheit. (I’m working on recognizing Celsius but subtracting 32 and dividing by 9 and multiplying by 5 just to come up with a new number that tells me it’s cold outside is just too much!). And it didn’t warm up as the day went on. I’m finding I’m not really much good in cold weather. I’d rather be curled up with a warm blanket, a pot of hot tea, and a good book than anywhere else. Therefore: autopilot.
We’re getting close to the Christmas break, and since we’ve been at it since July without much of a break, the routines are entrenched. It’s time for a nice, long break to shake things up and help everyone forget all the things we have been struggling to learn in the past months, so we can begin again. Therefore: autopilot.
I will be leaving Seoul at the end of February, and as the time gets closer, I find my enthusiasm and creativity waning. It’s like I need to wind down this job to make room for the next teacher to take over. I think I unconsciously realize I had better not get too close to my students and colleagues which would make leaving that much more difficult. Therefore: autopilot.
Christmas here is a different kind of holiday. In the U.S. it’s a family time. There are months and months--like way before Halloween--of music and programs and parades and gift ideas and parties and traditions and advent and church services reminding us to remember the real reason for the season. Then the day itself is a day for family--nuclear, extended, or borrowed. Here, there are plenty of lights, and Hyundai Department Store has had a banner up since October reminding us to make Christmas 2010 a Dream Christmas--yep, I don’t get that one either--maybe it’s just a twenty foot typo! But this is not a family season. The music is not the same. The atmosphere is not the same. The churches are still very active reminding us of the reason, and some of their programs are unbelievably beautiful. But it’s not the same. We will work on the 24th. The 25th I will be packing for my trip to Vietnam and Cambodia, and I will leave on the 26th. Therefore: autopilot.
But I think the biggest contributor to my malaise is the emotional extreme of this past weekend. On Saturday Aeran and I went to Seoul Arts Center to watch and listen to the beautiful music to Swan Lake. I think it may have been my first full ballet besides Nutcracker. It was absolutely beautiful. My friend Daphne had sent me all kinds of information about the ballet--the story, what to look for in the dances and the dancers, variations that could happen, nuances in the music. I felt I was prepared. I took my binoculars so I could scrutinize the costumes as well as the facial expressions of the dancers--were they going through the motions or really feeling their parts. Well, I don’t know much about the ballet, but this one was absolutely beautiful. While the major performers were outstanding and did the major moves Daphne had told me to watch out for, the swan chorus stole the show for me. They were so beautiful that I forgot they were dancers and saw them only as swans. Such grace--such synchronization--such beauty! I had no problem with “the suspension of disbelief.” I believed! Tchaikovsky’s music that we are all so familiar with made so much sense when I saw the story unfold. Beauty--music--art--all came together in those two and a half hours on Saturday night.
Sunday I met a group that turned out to be young, college exchange students for the most part and went to the House of Sharing, a home for the remaining Comfort Women conscripted by the Japanese in World War II. It was about an hour’s trip into the countryside to the home and museum to learn these women’s stories and their role in the history of WWII. I thought it was interesting that many of the young women who had come to learn about this had been influenced by their college history and literature courses that emphasized feminism. The museum is well done and informative. The volunteer guides are knowledgeable and sincere in getting out the message about this dark side of history. We met and were delightfully entertained by a couple of the women living in the home, who didn’t come to tell their story--they’ve told it so many times and it’s there for all to read on the web site, http://www.houseofsharing.org/--but came to greet us as welcome visitors. It was interesting that as we were singing and laughing in the gathering hall, we were joined by a group of Japanese tourists. It seems that the Japanese are very interested in these women’s cause and contribute much to the House of Sharing in time and talents. Many of these women have gone through art therapy to deal with the demons of their past. Their pictures are on display in the museum--poignant and moving.
So in one weekend I had seen how art can be used to express moving, emotional beauty and moving, emotional degradation. Perhaps it’s these extremes that have put me on autopilot.
The problem with autopilot is you’re being steered by a preordained course. Winter will take its time; the job will continue to bring its routine but also its surprises; art will be there for the seeking; history will unfold in the search for truth. I’m thinking it’s time to get back into the pilot’s seat.
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